“She was thick as thieves with these people.”
That’s how Minnesota Republican State Rep. Kristin Robbins described Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s ties to individuals embroiled in a massive fraud scandal during an exclusive interview with The Daily Wire.
I interviewed Robbins just hours after The New York Times blew the lid off another twist in Omar’s immigration controversy: an Obama-era FBI investigation into claims that the Minnesota Democrat entered into a fake marriage with a man suspected of being her brother. The newspaper reported that investigators found some evidence backing up those claims, but prosecutors never filed charges because the five-year deadline to bring a case had passed.
Robbins wasn’t letting that part slide.
“The Justice Department didn’t say she hadn’t committed a felony,” she said. “They said the statute had run out.”
Robbins had been trying to get answers out of Omar — whose real name is Ilhan Nur Said Elmi — according to the Department of Justice, for months before the latest bombshell landed, although her questions involved a different scandal.
I asked Robbins what she’d say if she were sitting across from the congresswoman face to face.
“Will you give us the documents that show your communication with everyone involved in Feeding Our Future?”
Feeding Our Future was a Minnesota nonprofit at the center of a $250 million fraud scheme that stole federal money meant to feed children. Robbins says six messages between Omar’s staff and people charged in the scheme showed up in federal court records. She’s been trying to get her hands on them ever since.
“We’ve asked her to come and testify voluntarily dozens of times, and she’s completely ghosted us,” Robbins told The Daily Wire.
Robbins leads a Minnesota House committee investigating fraud and state agencies. She’s spent months digging through records, grilling government officials, and talking to workers who say the state punished them for trying to expose people ripping off taxpayers.
(Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
Her investigation has uncovered questions about child care centers, autism care providers, sober homes, and businesses collecting Medicaid money.
And she has some questions for Omar, who introduced legislation during the pandemic that sought to loosen the rules for federal programs that feed children.
One of them: what was the congresswoman’s office telling people who later ended up charged in the Feeding Our Future scandal?
“Was she saying, here’s this new program, or this is how you do it?”
Robbins pointed to Abdikerm Eidleh, a man tied to the Feeding Our Future case who fled the country in 2022 before authorities brought him back to the United States in July 2026 to face charges. She said federal court records mentioned messages involving Omar’s staff.
She also brought up Omar’s ties to the owner of Safari Restaurant, whom a federal jury convicted in the fraud scandal. According to Robbins, Omar held campaign events at the restaurant and appeared in a video promoting the food program.
While Robbins hasn’t found proof that Omar knowingly took part in the fraud, she wants to know whether the congresswoman’s office helped any of the people involved and, if so, what kind of help they received.
Robbins says Omar could easily help clear up those questions by turning over the messages. So far though, her committee hasn’t gotten them.
“I don’t know what it was, but we should understand that’s part of our duty to unravel this.”
After asking for the records again and again, Robbins tried to force the issue with a subpoena, a legal order demanding the documents.
The three Democrats on the committee voted no.
After all the requests, the invitations for Omar to answer questions, and the failed vote, Robbins still didn’t have the messages.
“We didn’t get the information.”
Prosecutors have not charged Omar in the Feeding Our Future scandal. The congresswoman’s office did not respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment.
The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak found that Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, registered her consulting business at a home tied to several Feeding Our Future convicts. His reporting traced overlapping addresses and business connections between the woman who lived there and people convicted in the scheme.
Robbins has also looked into Noor’s business dealings, although she acknowledged her committee hasn’t found any direct payments connecting Noor to people charged in Feeding Our Future.
“So the sister, my understanding is, doesn’t even live in the country, but yet her consulting business is still registered in Minnesota,” Robbins said, adding that Noor does her consulting work from Kenya.
Some of the government workers who came to Robbins with claims of fraud were so scared of losing their jobs that they wouldn’t even show their faces during meetings.
Robbins described setting up a Zoom call with about 20 whistleblowers who kept their cameras turned off.
“To this day, I don’t know who they are.”
A few eventually agreed to meet her in person. Others worried they’d lose their jobs or face punishment for speaking up.
Robbins pointed to Faye Bernstein and Scott Stillman, two whistleblowers who she said paid a price for reporting suspected fraud.
According to Robbins, the department put Bernstein on leave after accusing her of creating a hostile work environment. She eventually got her job back but with different duties.
Stillman, Robbins said, faced harassment and eventually moved out of Minnesota because he feared for his family’s safety.
“So people would keep their heads down and not report.”
Robbins said some government workers also feared others would call them racist for questioning suspected fraud involving Somali-owned businesses.
She described investigators who faced accusations of unfairly targeting Somali providers and had to attend diversity training.
And some of the people helping Robbins get to the bottom of the suspected fraud? Members of the Somali community itself.
“Like, there are good people who want to clean this up, and I hate what this has done to their community.”
Robbins said Democrats wanted her to send the whistleblowers’ complaints to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, the very agency some of those workers were afraid would expose their identities.
She refused.
“The only reason they’re whistleblowing is because they know I will not rat them out to DHS.”
Robbins said her team checked the complaints and sent information they believed was credible to federal law enforcement. She also pushed for stronger protections for government workers who report fraud to lawmakers or police instead of going through their bosses.
Before becoming one of Minnesota’s most outspoken fraud investigators, Robbins worked as an economist and founded the Economic Club of Minnesota. Much of her career had been spent dealing with taxes, government rules, and the state’s economy.
She’s also a wife, a mom, and someone who actually enjoys digging through piles of government paperwork.
“I’ve always been honestly kind of a geek.”
Robbins took over the Minnesota House’s new fraud oversight committee in 2025, when questions about childcare centers collecting taxpayer money were starting to pile up.
One of her first investigations involved 65 child care centers the state said were under investigation.
Robbins thought Minnesota had dealt with child care fraud years earlier. Now she wanted to know why dozens of centers were back under the microscope. She arranged a meeting with then-Department of Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead before her committee held its first hearing.
Robbins said Harpstead didn’t appear to know about the investigations, even though her own department had put out a press release about them that morning.
“I thought this was resolved.”
Robbins recalled asking the commissioner about the new cases and getting a blank stare.
“She seemed unaware of it, which was stunning.”
Her staff had already visited several child care centers in the fall of 2024.
What did they find? Buildings that looked closed, windows covered up, and locations with no playgrounds or kids in sight.
The committee put together a list of about 72 providers whose payments and past violations raised questions.
Robbins asked state officials to look into the businesses and said officials told her the department had everything under control.
But government workers and county employees were coming forward with claims that officials had ignored fraud warnings.
In March 2025, committee Republicans launched MNFraud.com, a website where people could report suspected fraud. Robbins estimated that about 700 tips poured in during the first month.
“It was bonkers.”
Her staff tossed out tips they couldn’t back up and looked into complaints supported by records, including claims about businesses collecting taxpayer money from several different state programs.
Robbins described people running multiple companies from the same addresses, offices that appeared empty despite billing the state, and people connected to Feeding Our Future turning up in other taxpayer-funded programs.
Her committee began looking into autism services, sober homes, assisted living facilities, adult daycare programs, and rides Medicaid paid for.
Robbins said some of the same names and business tricks kept showing up.
“We started seeing this business model of how they were manipulating the Medicaid waiver services programs in Minnesota to scam the state.”
One case involved a man convicted in Feeding Our Future who Robbins said used a company tied to the scheme to buy two properties while facing criminal charges.
The properties later became assisted living facilities run by his wife, according to Robbins.
She said the facilities kept billing Minnesota taxpayers after his conviction.
Robbins also described a restaurant address showing up in records for several companies collecting Medicaid payments. She suspects some businesses may have helped move dirty money around, although she stressed that no one has proven that.
Her committee kept holding hearings throughout the summer and fall of 2025, even during months when Minnesota lawmakers usually aren’t holding committee meetings. Robbins said Democrats complained that the hearings were political and a waste of time.
“We didn’t care.”
Nick Shirley’s viral videos brought national attention to the child care fraud concerns Robbins’ committee had been investigating for months.
Robbins later traveled to Washington, D.C., to testify before the House and Senate about Minnesota’s fraud problems and the government workers who said the state punished them for speaking up.
She also worked with federal investigators and officials at the Justice Department, FBI, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as Minnesota’s taxpayer-funded programs came under closer watch.
Robbins said some Medicaid providers were passing state inspections even as whistleblowers described offices with matching paperwork, identical furniture, and computers that weren’t even plugged in.
She questioned how inspectors could sign off on those businesses without checking whether they were actually helping the people they were billing the state to serve.
Robbins isn’t running for re-election, so she believes some state officials are trying to wait her out rather than answer her questions.
“I have dozens of outstanding data requests that they just have ghosted me on because they just want to wait me out.”
She worries Democrats could shut down the oversight committee if they take control of the Minnesota House, leaving federal investigators to finish work her team hasn’t been able to complete.
Robbins wants the state to keep a closer eye on Medicaid providers, hand down tougher punishment to convicted fraudsters, and keep digging into businesses she believes took advantage of Minnesota’s taxpayer-funded programs.
She said she wishes she’d figured out sooner how closely some of the fraud schemes appeared to be connected.
“We were kind of picking different pieces of the elephant, not knowing it was an elephant for the first year.”
Robbins is leaving the Minnesota Legislature with dozens of unanswered requests for records, including the six messages involving Omar’s office that her committee never got.
She hopes federal investigators can get those records and find out whether they contain anything important to the Feeding Our Future case.
Near the end of our interview, Robbins invoked Ronald Reagan while explaining why she believes the work needs to continue after she leaves office.
“Democracy is not inherited in the bloodstream,” she said. “We have to protect it and pass it on to our children.”
